The chances of finding Survivors in the mud and crowds are dwindling. Meanwhile, the question is whether in the tailings basin at the time of the accident was worked. From Brumadinho, Marina Costa, and Nadia Pontes.
“All here are afraid that the dam would break one day – even if Vale (the operator of the iron ore mine, note. d. Red.) always guaranteed that he would be safe.” The breach of a dam of the tailings basin is just 24 hours ago, and the main square of the small town of Casa Branca, in the proximity of the misfortune place Brumadinho is filled. Local residents came out to protest.
11.3 million cubic meters of water, debris and earth blazed on Friday afternoon, their way – at least 34 people died. The consequences for the environment are still completely unclear. The people around the scene of Brumadinho in the state of Minas Gerais are mad. “The Problem with Vale in our Region, the excessive exploitation. There is no control,” said one of the protesters. They demand that the group leave the system in Brumadinho immediately.
300 people Missing in the mudslide.
While some are angry and protesting, many others have not even, whether you need to grieve: 300 people are still missing. “Just before I heard the first news of the disaster, we still had contact. But since then, I know nothing more,” a man in search of his brother, the DW. The brother is a technician at Vale and at the time of the dam collapse, he was in the service.
Another woman is missing her husband: “We are helpless!”, she says. Her husband works in an office next to the canteen of the company, which was completely destroyed by the mud masses.
The entire Saturday morning of 13 rescue helicopters circled above the accident area. In addition, the firefighters tried to reach people cut off by the dam break completely from the outside world and wait for help.
“No to mining, Yes to life”: The inhabitants of Brumadinho are mad
License allows reuse and recycling of waste from Brumadinho
During the search for the Missing runs, is the question responsible getting louder and louder. In the centre of the discussion of a license, the company has received Vale until the beginning of December 2018. It allows the company, its activities in the iron ore mine of Brumadinho.
Maria Teresa de Freitas Corujo is a consultant to the chamber for mining in the environmental Committee of the Federal state of Minas Gerais. She had spoken against the granting of the license. “Vale made pressure to get all the licenses that the group needed, just a meeting of the mining chamber granted,” says Freitas Corujo in an Interview with DW.
And so it came to be: the documents to the licensing shows that the company got the green light to certain substances from the tailings basin, which is now destroyed, to reduce. Whether there has been, at the time of the accident such Work, not to say the group of Vale of DW up to the publication of this article.
Suddenly homeless: The community center of Brumadinho and the people who have lost their homes
As it shook, but at the time of the dam break, neither rain, nor the earth, stay for Maria Teresa de Freitas Corujo only two possibilities: “Either lied Vale, as you said, the dam would be safe or the group has already started the Work for the extraction of the substances from the tailings basin, and this must be an error.”
Only in September of last year, the dam was tested, of all things, by the German TÜV Süd. There are no abnormalities to be found or damage has been found, confirmed a spokesman for the German company. TÜV Süd will support the studies and all the necessary documents.
Not the first accident of this type
Three years ago, the Vale group was due to a similar accident in the headlines. In a iron ore mine in Mariana, a dam of a return broke the holding basin. 19 people were killed, the river Rio Doce was contaminated to 650 kilometers.
You have not taken the disaster of Mariana seriously, says Andrea Zhouri, a researcher at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG). It deals with the impact of mining on the environment.
Waiting for information: members in one of the makeshift aid center in Brumadinho
Only a month after the dam broke in Mariana, adopted by the state of Minas Gerais, a law which changed the entire structure for the licensing of environmental aspects. However: “The licensing was easier. It was decided to head over heels, without a feasibility study or other scientific evidence, let alone a debate,” criticized Zhouri.
The so-called “upper oversight for priority projects” (Suppri) was established with the law. For Klemens Laschefski, a Professor at the University of Minas Gerais, this oversight was established for one purpose only: to put the environmental Council of the state of Minas Gerais, under pressure, in order for those projects that the Governor deems important, can be processed faster.
“The companies that these laws demand, are the same who have funded the election campaigns of the ruling party. What works are approved, the interests of corporations,” says Laschefski. Nothing had pushed the environmental aspect in the mining sector, more in the Background than the founding of the Suppri, the view of Laschefski and many other experts. “The licensing is now taking place at the sales counter”, so the opinion of the researcher Zhouri. “Add to this the lack of control over the state.” On the allegations raised, and wanted to Express there is no representative of the state of Minas Gerais.